1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of electronically processing financial transactions, and more particularly to the systems and methods of processing check identifiers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many customers make purchases from a computer or telephone. For example, customers select items at a web site, talk to a live telephone operator, or use automated menu entry from a telephone. Although credits cards and, in some occasions debit cards, can be used to make purchases from a computer or telephone, customers often prefer to use checks. For example, in many instances, using debit cards requires the merchants to maintain real-time communication links with the debit card banks. Since customers may use a wide variety of banks, merchants typically establish and maintain communication links with a large number of banks.
Using credit cards, on the other hand, can reduce the merchant's profit margin, because the merchant pays a percentage of the sales to the credit card company. In addition, some customers are concerned with the potential theft of credit card information. Some customers are also concerned with the monthly fees charged on credit cards with outstanding balances.
It is therefore desirable for merchants to allow customers to use checks to make purchases. In order to identify a check from a computer or telephone, customers enter a check identifier by typing on a computer keyboard or hitting the keys of a touch-tone telephone, or speak the check identifier to a telephone operator who enters the check identifier into a computer. A check identifier is typically printed on a paper check. In one example, a check identifier is the check identification data located in the Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) line printed on a paper check.
In a typical MICR line, the check identifier includes multiple fields such as the routing number field, the account number field, and the check number field. These fields are separated by separator symbols. The separator symbols are unique and typically do not correspond to regular symbols that appear on a computer keyboard. However, if the separator symbols are omitted and a check identifier is entered into a computer without any symbols, it becomes difficult to distinguish the different fields.